Persephone, Latin Proserpina or Proserpine, in Greek religion, daughter of Zeus, the chief god, and Demeter, the goddess of agriculture; she was the wife of Hades, king of the underworld. In the Homeric “Hymn to Demeter,” the story is told of how Persephone was gathering flowers in the Vale of Nysa when she was seized by Hades and removed to the underworld. Upon learning of the abduction, her mother, Demeter, in her misery, became unconcerned with the harvest or the fruitfulness of the earth, so that widespread famine ensued. Zeus therefore intervened, commanding Hades to release Persephone to her mother. Because Persephone had eaten a single pomegranate seed in the underworld, however, she could not be completely freed but had to remain one-third of the year with Hades, and spent the other two-thirds with her mother. The story that Persephone spent four months of each year in the underworld was no doubt meant to account for the barren appearance of Greek fields in full summer—after harvest, before their revival in the autumn rains, when they are plowed and sown.

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The most important sanctuary of Demeter (Ceres), the goddess of grain, and her daughter Kore (Persephone) was in the city of Eleusis in Attica, between Athens and Megara. Famous religious agricultural festivals—known as the Greater and the Lesser Eleusinian Mysteries—celebrating the sowing, sprouting, and reaping of the grain, were reenacted in this city. The cycle of the grain,...

...resembles the Mesopotamian land of the dead. The house of Hades is a labyrinth of dark, cold, and joyless halls, surrounded by locked gates and guarded by the hellhound Cerberus. Hell’s queen, Persephone, resides there a prisoner. This somber picture is confirmed in Homer’s Odyssey. When Odysseus visits Hades to consult the seer Tiresias in Book 11, he finds its...

...incarcerated in the underworld, were allegories of seasonal renewal. Perhaps the best-known myth of this type is the one that tells how Hades (Latin Pluto), the god of the underworld, carried Persephone off to be his consort, causing her mother, Demeter, the goddess of grain, to allow the earth to grow barren out of her grief. Because of her mother’s grief, Zeus permitted Persephone to...

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In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Persephone was the daughter of Zeus, the chief god, and Demeter, the goddess of agriculture. Against her will, she became the wife of Hades, the god of the underworld, which was the underground realm of the dead. The Romans called her Proserpina.

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